Chris Glaister // Folio

Role: Senior Designer, Blend Studios

During the development process of grab-it a rapid and cheap tooling technology was developed in the UK using CNC machining of perspex to enable many iterations of the design to be made within budget before travelling to the Far East. We stayed in China for 2 months to oversee tooling development and pre-production runs prior to setting up a full scale production line. 

We found that time spent in the UK saved huge amounts of time once in China enabling the product to go from the first hand made prototypes to full scale production within 4 months. 

Above: protoypes made by manually injecting machined acrylic moulds.

Above: production tooling in China.

Above: mixing silicon batch prior to moulding